Moscow Asked to Permit Jews Maintain Links with Relatives Abroad

August 27, 1962

JERUSALEM (Aug. 26)

The Histadrut, Israel’s Labor Federation, has addressed an urgent appeal to the Soviet Union to recognize the right of Russian Jews to maintain links with their brethren throughout the world and to allow those who wish to do so to migrate to Israel.

The appeal was published today in the Histadruly, daily, Davar, over the signature of the Histadrut’s executive committee and its Center for Culture and Education. The message recalled that a decade ago, 24 Jewish writers and intellectuals were executed in the Soviet Union after a secret trial.

The appeal said it appeared that the present Soviet Government had “reservations” about the trial and executions and apparently regarded them as sins of the Stalin period. The appeal added that although in recent years, the Soviet leaders had been redressing many acts of criminality of the Stalin era, the “incalculable outrage of the eradication of Jewish culture” in the Soviet Union still had not yet been set right.